Abstrato

Literacy Differentials among Scheduled Caste and Non-Schedule Castes in West Bengal, India: A District Wise Study

Dr. Rukhsana and Asraful Alam

After independent there have been Indian State took a variety of Constitutional and administrative measure for socio-economic development of schedule population in the county. Nevertheless there are wide variations in socioeconomic well being of Schedule and non-schedule Caste population in the country. Since independence there have been several reservations among the societal classes of India in different government and non-government sector. The aim of these reservations is to pull out the backward section of society and parallel them with mainstream of the society. Schedule Caste population, which make about one-sixth in country’s population, have quite low level of literacy for Schedule Caste (SC) population. In addition, there are quite inter-state, inter- district and inter-block variations. Major objective was to assess the regional pattern of literacy differential between Scheduled and non Scheduled Caste population in the State of West Bengal and to examine the rural-urban differentials in literacy rate of Schedules Castes population and how these differ from that of non-Scheduled population. The present study has been based on mainly secondary sources of data. In 2011, literacy rate of Schedule Caste in the State was 61.16 percent against 77.08 percent for the general population. Literacy level for Schedule Castes female population was much lower than the general population. For this study various GIS and cartographic techniques including maps and diagrams will be used to depict the spatial pattern of literacy attributes and their correlation.